spiderland
by twistedkites00
Summary: A lost witch finds herself by apparent freak accident in a Night World fortress in the sticks where the 4th wildpower is being hidden.
1. New Girl

Title: Spiderland  
  
Author: moon-pix  
  
Email: chinks@start.com.au  
  
Ratings: 15  
  
Spoilers: general night world. Later, some specific characters.  
  
Disclaimers: the wonderful concept sof the Night World and the  
  
wild powers are all LJS' and i am borrowing it for my own  
  
pleasure/fun, no harm intended.  
  
Summary: A lost witch finds herself by apparent freak accident  
  
in a Night World fortress in the sticks, where the fourth wild  
  
power is being hidden.  
  
1.  
  
'I wish we could go to hell.' - Cat Power  
  
Grier Hunt turned up forty minutes late to her first day at Oxely  
  
College, Tribune. The clock radio had been punctual enough,  
  
lighting up at 7am with the sound of some hick rockband she'd had  
  
no compunction about slamming off a few seconds later. After that,  
  
Grier had rolled to the other side of the new, still unfamiliar  
  
bed and gone back to sleep; a perfectly reasonable thing to do,  
  
she'd reasoned, since she'd stayed up late painting and only  
  
caught about four hours of z's. Her mother though, hammering on  
  
her door ten minutes later, hadn't seen the finer points of the  
  
necessity of sleep in the same way, and unfortunately she could be  
  
so damn insistent about things sometimes.  
  
She'd still strolled through the morning routine of showering and  
  
dressing and breakfasting though, and she yawned now as her mum  
  
pulled their old station wagon up beside the school's main  
  
entrance. Grier took a look at it while she threw her sheer dark  
  
hair up in what she knew, without even checking in the rear-view-  
  
mirror, was a flawless looking pony-tail.  
  
'Not bad, for operation Education Nowheresville', she muttered,  
  
not quite under her breath. It was a sprawling brick veneer 50's-  
  
blocky structure, set on a whole lot of pretty green grass ('ten  
  
acres of parkland', according to the school's handbook, which  
  
Grier didn't know as she had not yet bothered to read it). Nothing  
  
that special about that of course, the state of Kansas was  
  
certainly the place to come if you wanted to see endless miles of  
  
green featureless landscape, tampered with in only the most rustic  
  
of ways. There was a line of pretty thick, fir-tree wood running  
  
down from the back entrance of the school, which Grier hoped was  
  
accessible to students. Most painters liked to work with plenty of  
  
air and light, and a panoramic view. Grier was different, she  
  
worked best in claustrophobic woods, or under sandbanks, that  
  
screened out the world and the sun and left you only with a sense  
  
of complicated crystalline textures, your relation to which you  
  
could only start to fathom, or murky shapes and configurations  
  
better suggested with shading than with stencils.  
  
'I think it's lovely. It has it all over the Newtown High dejore  
  
of asphalt hand-ball courts and sky scrapers. And I know how  
  
important aesthetics are to you, my dear.' Her mother grinned at  
  
her from the other side of the car with good spirited mocking,  
  
brushing back the straying greying bang from her eyes. She was a  
  
60's child who'd never been calculating enough to surrender her  
  
hippie vales; she was a single parent; she was not merely self  
  
employed, but as a self-proclaimed fortune teller - and she was  
  
proud of it all. Her daughter had inherited her free-spiritedness,  
  
and her stubborn independence, which meant they clashed wills  
  
quite a lot.  
  
Grier smiled, but retorted 'Yeah well at least that was a top 500  
  
school inside the walls. Inner city melting pot of knowledge and  
  
all. Half the teachers filling in their time there before they  
  
took up chairs in the Ivy League, y'know.' She smirked as her  
  
mother rolled her eyes; professorships in elite universities were  
  
not Ms Hunt's idea of an ideal spiritual and personal goal. Grier  
  
continued, 'I have my doubts about whether they've heard of Darwin all the  
  
way out here..'  
  
'Yeah, yeah, alright missy. You better scoot. You've already  
  
nearly skipped out on first period bread-sawing.' She looked  
  
sardonically at the clock on the dashboard and tutted.  
  
'Hehe..Ok mom. Seeya later.' Grier jumped out and shut the door.  
  
Her mom tapped on the window with a long, elaborately sculptured  
  
purple nail. Grier leaned back in and opened the door to kiss her  
  
on the cheek; the slender, tiny woman reached up and brushed her  
  
forehead with a kiss before she could pull back out. 'Be well,  
  
child. Hecate's blessings on your five senses; be pure, audacious,  
  
wise, sincere and.. unbracketed.'  
  
'Oh mom.' Grier pulled back, readjusting the strap on the hessian  
  
bag she'd sewed together herself a few days before, and glancing  
  
around the empty parking lot self consciously. 'You know I don't  
  
believe in that sh- 'Unbracketed'?? What does that mean? that  
  
sounds kinda bondage-related and kinky...'  
  
'Oh, shush. You're too cynical by half, my darling, there are  
  
moorrre things in heaven and earth horatio, than you can  
  
schematise for your sketchbook! Now begood. Playnice. Ta ta.'  
  
Her mom pulled the door to and abruptly drove off. Grier chuckled  
  
to herself, smoothed out her full-length, grey-knit skirt, and  
  
headed for the front doors.  
  
'Heather Angel You Are Somewhere Off The Show' - Sonic Youth  
  
Grier glanced down at the class schedule in her hand. First  
  
period was chemistry, (ugh) Room 2G. She'd missed most of it  
  
already, of course, but she had few qualms about only turning up  
  
for the last few minutes. If there was one thing she'd learnt in  
  
her movement through the stream of school's shed been to, moving  
  
around a lot ever since she was a kid, it was that if you were  
  
smart, sassy and unafraid - it wasn't hard to adjust to new  
  
places. Being conspicuously beautiful in a slender lily-cut way  
  
helped too, Grier knew well, but didn't bother with too much.  
  
She loped up a set of stairs, automatically calculating that the  
  
room must be on the second floor, to the left, from where she'd  
  
been standing, rounded the corner into a long empty coridoor with  
  
a cemented floor and grey lockers on either side. And paused.  
  
The hallway wasn't empty after all; there was someone slouched  
  
against a lockered wall about ten metres from where she stood. It  
  
was a tall guy, and he was a striking thing because he was utterly  
  
still, his eyes were closed, his head was kind of kicked back  
  
against a grey metal door. In another moment Grier saw he had  
  
headphones dangling from his ears. He cut quite a beautiful figure  
  
in the ascetic carceral space, not just 'cause of his long, thin,  
  
hard-muscled body or his pretty-unruly mop of blonde curly hair  
  
falling over his eyes, but because of a certain aura he held about  
  
him; a sense of meditative focus, a kind of distilled and  
  
channelled something.  
  
Grier had to actively resist the urge to just drop her backpack  
  
and pull out a sketchbook right there.  
  
She didn't of course. Instead, she padded forward, her sneakers  
  
making almost no noise on the concrete, heading for the classroom  
  
door that was just ahead of headphone-boy. She glanced at him  
  
again as she got adjacent to him; wow he really was  
  
preternaturally still. She wondered if he was awake, if he was  
  
alive, hell, whether or not he was a wax-doll (his skin does look  
  
too flawless and too creamy to be anything but rubber padding, she  
  
chuckled silently).  
  
At another time she might have walked right up and tapped him on  
  
the shoulder and asked flat out what a spunk like him was doin'  
  
sleeping in a dingy little hallway like this? But just then it was  
  
more important to get to the dying minutes of chemistry, and her  
  
fingertips had just brushed the doorhandle when she heard his  
  
voice behind her say; 'hey.'  
  
Grier paused and looked around. The boy hadn't moved himself an  
  
inch from his prized position against what must be a lot more  
  
comfy wall of lockers than appearances suggested; he had opened  
  
his eyes though. A surprising glacier-green pair met hers straight  
  
on, under the tangled fringe.  
  
'Hey yourself,' Grier returned, but grinning.  
  
But the kid didn't smile back. In the same flat tone as 'hey' he  
  
said - 'Where are you going?'  
  
Grier blinked. 'To a beach volley ball game?' No change in the  
  
cold blank stare. 'Where does it look like i'm going? To class.'  
  
'First period is nearly over. Who are you? I haven't seen you  
  
around here before.'  
  
Grier gave the guy a calculating once-over, that took in his  
  
slouched, unmoving pose on the lockers, his fashionably tatty  
  
cargo pants and sonic youth tee. He looked like a slacker, arty  
  
indie-kid, but his dull sardonic voice had a weird air of bored  
  
authority she thought. He was too young to be a teacher, right?  
  
'Who are you? The hall monitor?'  
  
The guy returned her hostile glare. 'If you don't even know that,  
  
you're a seal-pup splashing in sharkinfested waters, kid. That  
  
kinda brashness is out of place here, I'll let you in on that  
  
right from the start.' There wasn't much humour in his tone, it  
  
was more a kinda weary sardonicness. 'What circle are you from?'  
  
'Oh, so you'd probly describe yourself more as the weird-morose-  
  
hintingly psychotic hall monitor type..' Grier summoned her best  
  
unimpressed voice, but actually she was just a little bit creeped  
  
out.  
  
'Twilight, right?', looking peeved but dogged.  
  
Grier crossed her arms over her annoying, queasy stomach. She was  
  
extra-irritated because somehow he was getting to her with his  
  
intimidate-the-newgirl schtick. 'That's when the giant bunny comes  
  
to take you back to the pumpkin patch, perhaps?'  
  
His face lost its look of bored procedure then and took on a much  
  
more attractive expression of surprised quizicalness. He didn't  
  
say anything for a few seconds, just stared hard at her face, and  
  
at that moment she had the oddest tingling sensation in her head,  
  
as if someone was in there with a feather duster.  
  
A clattering noise made her look down, and there was her book bag  
  
spilled out over the floor. Half furious, half embarrassed she  
  
knelt down on jellied knees to retrieve her stuff. The weirdo  
  
didn't lift a finger to help, and when she made it back to her  
  
feet his look was bemused and his eyes were two shuttered slits of  
  
green beneath heavy eyelashes. 'I'm sorry, kid. I didn't realise  
  
you were as new as all that.' There was a kind of genuine sympathy  
  
in his voice too, that bugged Grier more than anything else could  
  
have.  
  
'Aw, well I guess weird-creepiness and omnipotence don't always  
  
go hand-in-hand eh?' she said acidly.  
  
He laughed, and actually chucked her chin. 'You're funny. Cute,  
  
too. I bet you've even heard of sonic youth?'  
  
'Yeah, i've heard they have some blonde girly as their bassist,  
  
how lame that must be.' She felt unsettled, and unready for combat  
  
and it was the best she could do.  
  
He grinned. 'Let's kill our parents and hit the road.'  
  
'Goo's my least favourite album of theirs.'  
  
'Shucks. It could have been sucha beautiful thing.' Right then a  
  
deafening noise rattled down the concrete corridor, one of those  
  
oldfashioned school bells that make the whole building shake.  
  
'Gee, it looks like you missed out on chem afterall, Grier. What a  
  
poor first-day impression to make. You'll hafta get up when the  
  
alarm rings tomorrow morning, huh. Or I will set the hall monitor  
  
on your ass. And no, it's not me.. but I got him in my pocket.' He  
  
winked, but his smile oddly faded and he said in a different  
  
tone, 'You take care'.  
  
The chemlab door opened then, and Grier didn't have time to  
  
inquire of him how he knew her name and all about what she'd been  
  
doing that morning (of course, she reasoned later that he'd been  
  
toying with her all along and had known her as the new girl Grier-  
  
Hunt on sight), because kids were spilling into the hallway, and,  
  
more noteworthily, stopping dead in their tracks. An exceptionally  
  
goodlooking Asian kid, with spiky gelled hair and sexy, smudged-  
  
with-eyeliner eyes was the first one to actually speak to the  
  
object of their attention though. 'ALEX!!!' he yelped, rushing  
  
past Grier. 'You're back! Are you back? Is this for real, are you  
  
spending the year?' He was excited, gleeful even, and it was all  
  
the more infectious because, with his perfectly worn black jeans,  
  
black tee that looked like it was hand printed with an esoteric  
  
black and white photograph of a tractor in a field, and strings-  
  
for-bracelets he looked like the kind of kid that usually hung  
  
back inside his own coup of aristocratic cool.  
  
'Naiad, heyyy.' The guy called Alex responded, slapping the kids  
  
hands, but oddly the warmth he'd shown Grier just before had  
  
drained from him again, and his voice had that same cipher-  
  
sternness with which he'd first addressed her. 'Yeah, I'm here all  
  
year I guess.'  
  
The boy with the weird-ass-name looked a bit confused about the  
  
coolness in the other's voice, and the way he now shrugged him off  
  
and leant back towards the wall, but he tried again anyway,  
  
immediately in a way that reminded Grier of a puppy hopefully  
  
wagging it's tail. 'Well y'know, glad days then! this place has  
  
been dead as a pile of poo while you've been away..'  
  
'Yeah well even a pile of poo attracts flies and other kinds of  
  
interesting life forms..' at this point, he paused and looked  
  
pointedly at the gawking kids surrounding him. 'Righto, move on  
  
people, let's get this flea circus on the road, eh?'  
  
Most of the students hurried off like they'd just got the cap'n's  
  
orders but Grier lingered and she heard what he said as he turned  
  
back, with that reprised sullen-tired-bored look again. 'And you  
  
shouldn't be so damn sure you want to shovel the refuse and see  
  
what's underneath, Naiad.' He cut off the other's chuckle 'No,  
  
look kid I mean it. I'm here for a quiet year. 'Cuz things are  
  
different now: and I'm different. Some weird-shit happened to me  
  
this summer..' and then he cut himself short, and looked at Grier,  
  
now the only person left standing by the chemlab. He rolled his  
  
eyes ceilingwood, and this time Grier felt like she was the stray  
  
kitten, that he'd thought he'd shaken off. He turned Naiad around  
  
like a toy soldier so he faced the other direction. 'C'mon, lets  
  
go find Russ and Jewel anyway, I have some family business to take  
  
care of...'  
  
As the two uncannily pretty boys walked away, Grier, who  
  
incidentally wasn't used to watching retreating backs, couldn't  
  
resist whispering spitefully to herself, 'well if you're not  
  
monitoring the hall.. who the hell do you think you are..',  
  
whereupon, almost as if he'd heard her, he turned and gave her a  
  
brief, disturbing smile. Then he mouthed something, which Grier  
  
didn't quite catch; later she replayed it in her mind again and  
  
realised with a shudder (except that he *can't* have heard) it  
  
might have been: 'just call me 'jaws', baby'. 


	2. Jewel and Charcoal

Title: Spiderland  
  
Disclaimers: L.J.S is the author from whom all new NW flights of fancy derive. All kudos to her cos she is the Goddess.  
  
(the inevitable) A/N: This is a fic I've been mulling over for so long it's almost been ground into non-existent dust in my brain. But lately I've kind of figured out what I want to do with it, so here's 2 chapters, with more to come soon I hope.  
  
2.  
  
'I'm so damned, I can't win, my heart in my hands again' - ..And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead.  
  
By the time lunchperiod rolled around Grier wasn't feeling a  
  
whole lot more sure-footed in her new environs. The sheer  
  
weirdness of that first encounter had toppled her off balance, and  
  
now everything seemed off kilter. There was certainly no other  
  
reasonable explanation for why the kids here seemed so brittle and  
  
unwelcoming, so cliquey and unresponsive to thenewgirl, than that  
  
she was projecting her own negative discomfit onto them. That was  
  
basic psychology, and she'd learnt it early from Jim Morrison,  
  
/people are strange when you're a stranger/; she'd just never  
  
actually *been* in the mindset before, or at least not for very  
  
long.  
  
But there must have been something wrong with the way she'd said  
  
hello to the girls in the hallway outside second period's modern  
  
literature class, to make them fall quiet 2 minutes into the  
  
getting-to-know-you chitchat and pick the other side of the  
  
classroom when the teacher called them in. She'd shrugged that  
  
reaction and off and been doubly bright and quadruply smiley with  
  
the goodlooking boy that sat down next to her in math, but she  
  
must have been acting dopey, because he too got very interested in  
  
his textbook soon after they'd started chatting. Things didn't  
  
improve through the next two periods, and by lunch Grier was  
  
getting to know for the first time what it felt like to be a  
  
stranger, an outsider.  
  
It wasn't as if the students here looked any different to any  
  
she'd seen at all her other schools; it was the usual melee of  
  
geeks, arty kids, jocks and freaks. But what was weird was the  
  
uniformly cold response she got from all of them, she felt like  
  
she was lacking whatever component it is that makes one human  
  
being want to talk to another one here.  
  
And it might just be that I'm getting a little paranoid, she  
  
thought ironically, as she paused with uncharacteristic  
  
indecisiveness at the doors of the teeming cafetiria. What she  
  
felt like doing over lunch period was grabbing a lemonade from the  
  
vending machine, finding a quiet corner of an empty classroom, and  
  
maybe making a start on the fat text they'd just been set in lit.  
  
(Don Dellilo's 'Underworld', a title which seemed somehow  
  
appropriate today). But instead, upon recognising in herself this  
  
desire to run away, she stiffened her resolve, pushed open both of  
  
the double-doors, and strode into a large room filled with long  
  
rectangular tables with benches stretching along either side, and  
  
the food counter at the front.  
  
A high school lunch room that looked like every high school  
  
lunchroom all over America, except this one perhaps was a little  
  
more pleasant, with the loud noise created by chatter and eating,  
  
and the oppressive press of many bodies offset by a row of big  
  
windows on the outiside wall which gave a view of the back of the  
  
school; a wide expanse of well kept green lawn and then the start  
  
of the firtrees Grier had glimpsed that morning. Trying to take  
  
comfort in the familiarity and ordinariness of it all, Grier  
  
deliberately ignored everyone around her while she selected her  
  
lunch, a bowl of fruit salad and a peanut butter sandwitch, and  
  
then she stood still holding her tray while she cooly surveyed the  
  
room, looking for a place to sit.  
  
One of the nearer tables was half empty, with a group of five or  
  
so students clustered at one end. Not really flash looking kids,  
  
but they were talking animatedly, and Grier thought they looked  
  
nice. She approached smiling, letting nothing of the knot of  
  
nervousness in her stomache show on her face, and said 'Hi there.'  
  
Conversations broke off immediately as the kids looked up. A  
  
bizzarely long pause ensued, while Grier looked at the group and  
  
the group looked anywhere else but at her. At last, when it became  
  
apparent she wasn't going away, one of the boys mumbled 'Uh hi'.  
  
He looked like he would have preferred disappearing under his  
  
baseball cap.  
  
Grier swallowed. 'Do you mind if I sit with you? There isn't many  
  
other empty spaces.'  
  
Another lengthy silence, this one even more heavy-feeling because  
  
kids at surrounding tables seemed to have stopped what they were  
  
doing to listen. At the packed-table next to the one she was  
  
hovering by, Grier couldn't help noticing one girl reclining back  
  
in her chair and openly watching. When she caught Grier's eye, she  
  
smirked nastily.  
  
'Okay..' baseball-cap boy was mumbling at last.  
  
Grier sank onto the nearest stretch of bench, and wished she  
  
could sink through it and into the floor. More silence. When she  
  
could no longer stand it, she said; 'I'm Grier.'  
  
The oppressive, unrelenting silence. The students, two girls and  
  
two other boys besides the kid in the cap, didn't look happy, she  
  
thought, staring at their plates and at their shoes, but they also  
  
didn't respond, or offer their names. After a moment she struggled  
  
on in an even softer voice that still seemed to ricochet around  
  
the ever-widening circle of quiet she was the center of; 'I'm new  
  
here, you know. Today's my first day. I guess I'm still learning  
  
the ropes around this place..'  
  
A snort of open and derisive laughter. Not from the table Grier  
  
was at, which might as well have been the cacoon of silence, but  
  
from the next one. Grier's head snapped up and she glared at the  
  
same girl who had been watching her tiny melodrama unfold before,  
  
and taking so much obvious pleasure in it. She held Grier's eye  
  
again for a moment, and then turned to the person next to her and  
  
said distinctly and in a tone of lazy hypothetical-inquiry 'What  
  
do you reckon, do you think anyone here can be bothered to show  
  
her what to do with her rope? Surely once she gathers enough of  
  
it,she'll know neatly how to hang herself, and none of us need  
  
trouble about it..'  
  
The widening pit of fear and faint-nausea inside Grier turned  
  
suddenly to ice. She sat immobolised with anger for a second,  
  
while she faintly noticed that the person the girl was addressing  
  
was the spunky Japanese boy from that morning, Naiad. Naiad at  
  
that moment, in fact, was staring unenthralled-ly out of one of  
  
the windows, and just then he stood up and dropped a paper napkin  
  
on his plate, through long and beautiful fingers. 'Sometimes I  
  
don't know what I find more attractive about you, Jewel, your  
  
steadfast trivialness or your irrepressable pettyness. I'm off to  
  
find Alex anyway, we're ditching the rest of the day to drive into  
  
the city and get some stuff. Catch you late tonight, maybe.'  
  
Grier was standing up, the ice in her tummy turning to something  
  
like resolve, as she heard the girl called Jewel murmur 'Bye then'  
  
throatily and unoffendedly, like animosity was the usual-tone of  
  
her conversations with Naiad. Grier didn't care about that now  
  
though. Leaving her lunch untouched on the tabletop, she stepped  
  
out of the bench and stalked around the two tables, not stopping  
  
until she was right next to Jewel and the empty space Naiad had  
  
vacated.  
  
From a distance, Jewel had looked beautiful in a long-legged,  
  
blonde-haired, exquisitely dressed and accessorised barbie-doll  
  
kind of way, right down to the gleaming white teeth behind the  
  
mocking smile. Up close she was mesmerising. Grier couldn't help  
  
noticing her skin had that same waxy-perfection she'd been unnerved  
  
by..somewhere else that day, and her eyes were smokey blue, with a  
  
wicked tilt. Grier felt almost dizzy looking into them, like some  
  
door to a vortex had been opened, and she rocked slightly on her  
  
feet.  
  
Then the girl smiled again, that idle, amused, cruel smile, and  
  
Grier recollected what she was doing there. She stood up  
  
straighter and said quietly, politely, in a voice that barely  
  
shook at all 'Can I sit here?'  
  
'No you can't.' In the same patient tone as one would use to say  
  
to a very small child who might choke on it, 'No you can't have a  
  
stick of gum.'  
  
Grier looked away for a second to hide the fact that she felt stung. Against the far wall she noticed a boy, sitting alone and quietly eating his lunch. He was different from everyone else in the room because he wasn't looking at her.  
  
Grier squared up to face her straight on. 'Why not? Did it stop  
  
being a free country?'  
  
The girl tilted her head back and tittered with angelical  
  
laughter at this, joined swiftly by a hefty-looking guy on her  
  
other side, and then by the rest of the table. Grier folded her  
  
arms and said nothing, waiting. 'Oh she's just like a six-week-old  
  
kitten isn't she? It's adorable, honestly, honey I could eat you  
  
right up.'  
  
'Oh me too', overly-muscular-boy-on-the-right said.  
  
'See. Russ too.' The girl's laughter finally subsided, and she  
  
glanced down to the roll she was lazily buttering. 'In answer to  
  
your question though, you just might have missed some road signage  
  
on your way out here. Maybe you clicked your heels at the wrong  
  
time. Your in Tribune, Kansas now, Dorothy, and we're a very old  
  
town you know. Kind of out of the way of the hustlin', bustlin'  
  
norm. This place has deep roots, and deeper traditions. It's not  
  
exactly what you would call a free-country no.'  
  
Grier attempted to hide her sheer amazement at this crazy speech  
  
by deadpanning 'You have traditions about who sits at the table?'  
  
Jewel looked up and smiled then in a way that made Grier feel  
  
queasy 'Indeed we do. They hark back to fine old-time laws of  
  
segregation.We're not uncouth enough to put up signs, but if we  
  
did they'd read..' she paused graciously and looked at the bulky-  
  
boy known as Russ.  
  
'No mongrels, half-breeds, or clueless, burdensome fricken  
  
newbies allowed.' Russ said. He looked like he relished it.  
  
3.  
  
By the end of the day Grier was exhausted from maintaining a facade of calm detachment, when outside she had to face an endless parade of kids who would barely make eye contact with her, and inside her head was a mess. There had been one boy who *had* seemed to very deliberately catch her eye as she was leaving the cafeteria after her confrontation with Jewel at lunch, but she hadn't seen him since and now thought maybe she'd imagined it. She considered skipping her last class and walking home, but rejected the idea almost immediately as too easy. Anyway, last period was art. Maybe something could be salvaged from this horrible day.  
  
A quick scan of the almost-full classroom from the doorway at least reassured her that Jewel wasn't in this class, or any of her friends. She hadn't shared a class with any of them all day, so her luck was holding. It was a nice looking artroom, with long wooden desks in the front, easles and student works covering the big area at the back, and large windows along the side looking out on the front lawn. She slid into the back row, where there was still a few seats empty, and took out a pad and pen.  
  
A compact woman with short curly hair and a pretty face walked in a few minutes later and introduced herself as Ms. Croft. 'Welcome again to advanced art. I hope you all had a nice break, and you're back rearing to go. I thought today we might just get straight into it. Next week we'll start on the Impressionists, but for today I want you to go back there and make me something. A momento of your summer break, if you like. Any format will do but I want it more or less complete by the end of the period. Go to it.'  
  
With a snapping of books and a screeching of chairs the class got up and headed towards the back of the room. Grier followed along, a real buzz of quiet excitement stirring in her stomache for the first time that day. (Well. Excitement of the good, non-scary kind). Grier had always been excellent at art, in fact she could say with no false modesty that she'd always been the best out of any group she'd been in. Her artistic abilities were one thing she could count on to be recognized, even if nothing else she did at this school seemed to measure up.  
  
She took a cursory glance at the stuff already displayed on a shelf along the back wall, paintings and sketches and sculptures in varying stages of completion. They all looked pretty standard until one shoved in a corner caught her eye. It was a grey stone sculpture, long and thin, in the shape of a loping horse. It was utterly strange, almost menacingly alien (no horse could be shaped like that or stretched out in that way), and it was breath-takingly beautiful.  
  
'Wonderful, isn't it?' a quiet voice said from behind her.  
  
Grier turned to see a tall girl with a serious face fixing cool green eyes on the horse sculpture. 'It is.' she replied carefully. This was the first time all day anyone had initiated a conversation with her.'Is it yours?'  
  
'Oh I wish.' The girl laughed, a slightly bitter sound. 'No, that's Naiad. A boy who only turns up every third lesson or so to unleash his ridiculously effortless talent on the rest of us and to make us feel like hacks before cutting again again.' The girl turned to face her, then very deliberately looked her up and down. 'You're Grier. The new kid.'  
  
'Yeah' Grier responded flatly. Then she added, suddenly irritated 'I feel like my reputation precedes me whereever I go at this school. I didn't think I'd been here long enough to have a reputation.'  
  
The girl laughed shortly, a brittle sound. Grier blinked. The girl said, with a slightly malicious glint in her large green eyes, "It's not the length of time you've been here. It's the impression you've made."  
  
Grier stared at the auburn haired girl with the big green eyes for a moment more than turned away, with a silent shake of the head. She had no patience left today for a taunting conversation like this one.  
  
At the back of the room were giant sheets of paper and a variety of art materials. Grier went straight for the charcoal pieces. With charcoal, drawing felt raw, unconstricted, honest. It created a black and white outlet for internal bewildering prisms of colour. Grier worked for 15 minutes almost without thinking, applying huge messy strokes and tiny deft ones, sometimes deliberately blotting the charcoal with the palm of her hand. She finally stepped back to take and breath, and looked at it. And felt a ripple of unease go the length of her spine.  
  
'Well well'. Grier spun around, already agitated, and there was the green eye'd girl standing behind her again. 'The new kid has talent. That's striking. Is it a real place?'  
  
Grier nodded. 'My street back home in New Town.'  
  
'I'm glad I don't have to go there.' The girl turned around to face Grier. 'I'm Amy. Are you doing anything after school?'  
  
'Um. No.'  
  
'Good. Let's go into town together. I'll show you around.'  
  
'Why would you want to do that?' Grier asked bluntly.  
  
'Because you've made an excellent second impression, kid. I wanna know more.'  
  
'You know you and I are about the same age. So if you cut out all this patronising 'kid' business, I'll come along.'  
  
Amy laughed softly. "Fine. Why don't we go now, tiger?'  
  
'Because there's still 20 minutes left of class?'  
  
'So?'  
  
'I'm not ditching on my first day.' Grier said flatly. The tingling sensation had made its way to her stomach. She wasn't sure if the sick feeling was fear or excitement or both.  
  
Amy exagerratedly rolled her eyes. 'Well ok. If you want to be like that about it. Mz Croft?'  
  
'Yes Amy?'  
  
'I'm feeling a bit sick. I have a cold or something coming on I guess. So Grier is going to take me home.'  
  
To Grier's utter amazement the teacher didn't even blink. She just walked over to her desk, got out a book of hallway pass notes, and scribbled on it. Then she ripped it out and handed it over. 'I hope you feel better Amy.' Ms Croft said. There was something odd about the tone of her voice. It was just... flat. Her eyes flickered over Grier for only the briefest moment before she turned and walked back over to a cluster of students who were working together on some kind of summer collage.  
  
Amy held up the hall-pass in front of Grier's nose like it was fresh $100 bill hovering over a line of cocaine. 'Are we good to go?'  
  
'Apparently' came Grier's low reply. She was looking at her picture again. It was her old street alright, but not the way she remembered it. The street the picture showed should have had the ambiance of a lively, comfortable lower-class- neighbourhood, lined with townhouses and big maple trees and the day care centre directly across from where she lived, and next to it a tiny park with a set of rusty swings and a badly- constructed slippery dip that kids got stuck on half way down. In her picture, a night time scene, the childcare centre and the park were gone, empty spaces; the small houses were black crouching shapes devoid of differentiation. A solitary light, signified by a gap in the swirling mass of dark smudgey charcoal that otherwise consumed the white paper, was there in the form of a streetlamp. The lamp lit up the first few metres of the street, which were nearest to the viewer's perspective, but the rest of it was dark, menacing. A wintry maple was the only other prominent feature of the picture, jutting black leafless fingers across the lighted space, looking like a dead and exposed transformer. The frisson she felt now was certainly fear. Why on earth had she drawn her street like *that*?  
  
'It's the medium you know, charcoal. It distorts things, makes them seem other than they are.'  
  
'What? How?' Grier snapped, really unsettled now.  
  
'How? How nothing. I noticed how you were looking at the picture that's all.' Amy said. There was a note of concilliation in her voice.  
  
'Oh' Grier said, feeling a bit silly. Of course. Amy was right too, it was hard to do anything else with charcoal than create black blobs. 'Ok. Well. Let's go.'  
  
(the inevitable second, apologetic) A/N: these chapters are slow laying-the- ground work type ones. In the next few chapters Grier and Alex will find out they are enemies (and more interestingly from my angsty, soppy perspective, soulmates, natch!), and another big bad type enemy no-one could like is going to appear. 


	3. Some Lamb

The hallpass was a waste of time, they cut through the school without anyone asking for it. Outside into the auben coloured afternoon. Cold wind immediately raised goosebumps on Grier's arms. "So. Where are you taking me off to that's more important than my edjacashion?" She said it playfully, but with an edge of seriousness.  
  
Amy was setting a brisk pace along the driveway and out onto the road. Her arms were folded tight across her chest. 'C'mon Grier. You're not this much of a hopeless square. Enough with the supernerd reaction-formation. Deal with some uncertainty.'  
  
'Thank you Freud. I'm serious though, I'm not cutting to go to the mall or something. Getting good grades and a scholarship is my ticket out of this town and all the towns like it.'  
  
Grier heard a small sound come from the girl striding beside her. It sounded like a snort. But the next second Amy turned, grabbed her hand, and said 'Oh sure, I understand. Let's hurry now though, huh? It's really freaking cold today.' She headed up the road then at a truly remarkable pace, dragging Grier along behind. Grier had thought they were walking fast already. But now she was almost running to keep up.  
  
In less than five minutes she was exhausted, gulping in lungfuls of icy air in shallow gasps. She hated physical exertion of any kind. God, why am I doing this? she thought. I should just go home. But she didn't.  
  
A few minutes and what felt like a bad gym class later they arrived in town. Amy pulled her across a couple of streets and finally stopped on the pavement between a 'Toys R Us' store and tiny hairdressers, the kind where men go to get their hair cut for 5 dollars. She dropped Grier's hand.  
  
Grier immediately bent over, clutching the stitch in her side. She could feel Amy watching her, could sense her distate. For some reason it made her feel ashamed. She straightened, trying to make her breathing more quiet and normal. She shot a look at the elevator heading up through Toys R Us. 'Are we at the mall?'  
  
'The one and only one in the Tribune greater area, yep.'  
  
There was something overtly sarcastic and belittling in Amy's tone. But when she headed into the toy store Grier found herself following. 'I've got a jacket on lay-buy I want to pick up. Anyway, don't diss the mall. Malls are meccas of potential learning. Think about it. They're supercomplexes that have gathered within them everything society considers valuable. Sacred and desired artifacts locked in glass cases. Long, brilliantly lit corridoors, everything visible at one glance within them from one end to the other. A sense of abundant choice and luxury paired with a powerful, homogenising sense of security. It's all here.'  
  
Grier's mouth quirked at this monologue. But she only murmured 'I don't wanna be at the mall.' The words died on her lips as she stepped off the smoothly gliding metal steps and looked up. It was a shopping centre of exquisite construction, rising in wide squares over three levels and open in the centre with a huge, glass-domed roof above. One quick scan revealed, inexplicably, the presence of all the boutique brands and chains that'd be found in a very large metropolis. But it was a sight more marvelous that stopped Grier in her tracks. Rising from the ground below through the centre of the squares, almost to the glass roof, was a different kind of structure, a far older one. It was a perfectly cylindrical tower, made of huge hewn-granite slabs; a solid, windowless, doorless, spire.  
  
'Pretty cool huh? It's a heritage building. Over 250 years old. They preserved it when they built this up around it in the 60's.'  
  
'But what is it?'  
  
'A prison tower.' Grier turned to face Amy in amazement. Amy smiled. 'Yeah, a real prison tower. Like the one Richard III supposedly executed his two young nephews in. There is a door, right up at the top, facing the other direction.'  
  
'But-' Grier didn't even know how to voice all the mad objections to this looming finger of stone in front of her.'  
  
'Why'd they ever build a replica of the Tower of London in a little backwoods country town? Who knows. There's no record of who built it, or why. It was used as a temporary holding cell though, through the nineteenth century up until the beginning of this one. Criminals who were to be put to death were kept here the night before their execution. At first they hung them right in front of the tower. Until it was decided by some congressional-comittee that the putting to death of men and women was no longer to be deemed a public spectacle. That seems to miss the point, doesn't it?' Amy was walking again, Grier realised, and she stepped quickly to catch up. 'How can you strike the fear of God's retribution into the hearts of those who would commit serious crimes if they can't see the consequences? It renders the act of execution itself merely another amoral instance of meaningless brutality.'  
  
'No, it merely serves a different kind of morality.' Grier murmered. Her mind wasn't fully focussed on the conversation. 'A more abstract sense of justice. Evil has made an assault on good and the balance can only be reddressed by revisiting the misdeed in kind. A life for a life. A need for cosmic harmony, a careful accounting, a credit and debit sheet. This is a private thing, an elemental thing, it is better done behind closed doors. Later the moral philosophy was refined, it was maintained that there are certain inalienable, inhuman, God-given principles that must be upheld at all costs. The value of life, for example, must be guaranteed by the state, even if the necessary price is the taking of life.'  
  
'Is that what you believe?' Amy asked, glancing quickly over at Grier.  
  
'I'm not sure I believe there are absolute spiritual truths. I think believing in them is like believing the clear blue day-sky is the cap of the universe, almost close enough to touch, and ignoring the huge galaxy of lights, unimaginably far away, that night brings. But I do think life in all its complexity and with all its flaws is the only meaningful receptacle, in all the infinite chances of the world. It is the only pattern former, the only pattern breaker. The only surely sacred thing, maybe; the bloodflow, the delicate and perishable network of arteries and veins, of thoughts and sensory information. I don't think extinguishing that is the answer. I don't believe in simple, elegant, brutal concepts like the death penalty.'  
  
'You're a humanist then.' There was something almost laughingly mocking (or was it bitter?) in Amy's voice that bought Grier out of her reviere, her eyes off the tower and onto the girl's face. But she'd turned towards a large Bennetton shop. 'I have to duck in here and grab that jacket.'  
  
They went in together, past rows of conservative wollen pants and well made, colourful shirts. Grier wondered again how a brand-shop like this could survive in a little place like Tribune. Amy paid the last installment on a long and lovely black suede jacket, modelling it for Grier before the shop assistant wrapped it in tissue and put it in a cute, elasticised carry bag.  
  
They walked out together, Amy swinging the bag energetically. Grier chuckled at the childlikeness of this behaviour, in spite of the tension between them. 'Jaunty' she said, one eyebrow raised.  
  
Amy grinned in return. 'Let's go get a coffee.'  
  
She led the way up two more escalators to a comfy and tacky looking Starbucks. Grier got a long black and sunk down ona free bench, next to a cheesy yellow couch occupied by a bunch of young kids, obviously cutting school as she herself was. Several other people were patronising the place, mostly older, professionally dressed types. Amy tottered over, carefully carrying a Vienna coffee with a huge swirl of whipped cream rising over the mug it was in, almost as tall again as the mug.  
  
They sipped their coffees in silence. Grier had so many questions swirling around her head she didn't have a clue where to start and Amy seemed content to give all her attention to her cup, only sometimes glancing Grier's way through lowered eyelashes.  
  
'Do you like Starbucks?' Grier said finally.  
  
'Sure. You want any kind of coffee, they'll make it for you here.'  
  
'Mm.. but it's such a.. franchise. The places I've lived, people avoid them like the plauge. They're strictly for country tourists. The same might be said for most of the shops you have in this complex actually....'  
  
'Well where do you think you are honey? Tribune is about as deep country as you can get. The nearest city is like 400 miles away. Many of us have never been to a city at all. Don't begrudge us a few nostalgic luxuries.'  
  
'But it's so strange, almost against the grain of reason, having all these places here. What about local traders? How do they survive? And who could afford to buy the rights to all these franchises?'  
  
'You might think of us as country hicks Grier but don't make the mistake of thinking of us as poor country hicks. Most of us here have money. There are some here who are extremely wealthy, indecently so.'  
  
'Oh.' Grier said. As if that explained things. It didn't, it only deepend the mystery. They lapsed into silence again for a while. Amy had put her spoon down on her saucer and was shoving her purse into the plastic bag when Grier ventured one last question. 'And you? Are you going to travel, see other places? After this year, after school's finished, maybe?'  
  
'Can't. My family needs me here.' Amy snapped immediately, standing up. 'Besides, like I said, the city's here. Don't need to leave.' Her smile looked bleakly ironic.  
  
Grier stood up too, feeling uncertain. The tension between them was stronger, more ominous, than ever.  
  
'I've got one more place I need to go,' Amy said evenly. 'But you can go home now. If you promise to visit me tonight.'  
  
'Where else do you have to go?' Grier asked, stalling for time, not sure she wanted to do anything else ever with this girl.  
  
'The tower shop.' Amy smiled at Grier's look. 'It wouldn't interest you. No execution paraphenalia. It just sells ointments, bath oils, herbal cures, that sort of thing. Against the rational grain you know.' They'd walked out of Starbucks, in an anti-clockwise direction back to the elevators. 'So will you come over tonight? I think we can be friends. You'll need some friends here. New girl.'  
  
They'd reached the opposite side of the square. Grier stared in fascination at the lone door, sticking out of the side of that ugly black tower, with a steel mesh bridge linking it to the elegantly modern third story balcany. Beaded strings hung over the entrance, hiding what was inside. 'Ok' she said. She was afraid, moreso now than before, when she hadn't admitted to feeling it, but had felt it more and more throughout the day. *Afraid*. But she was intrigued too.  
  
'Great. I'll just give you my address.' Amy haphazadly tore a piece of paper from one of her textbooks, scrawling the street name and number above some algebraic exercises. Grier put it in her pocket. She looked at the tower again. Yes that was some kind of flower painted over the door. In black.  
  
'It'll be fun. We might rent some dvds. I'll get some snacks. Come about 8 and don't be late. Some other people are coming too.'  
  
'Who?' Grier called after her, suddenly paying attention again. Amy said over her shoulder; 'Alex, Naiad, Jewel and Russ. My best friends.' 


	4. webs

8pm. Grier stood on the porch of her house and wondered if she should ambandon the comfy square of light the bare bulb hanging above her shed. The night was icy cold, crystal clear. The moon was one sliver off being full. The gravel road below was lit up in its ghost white luminesance. Inviting.  
  
Buttoning up her coat and pulling on her hood, Grier walked down the three steps to her driveway and out onto the road.  
  
  
  
*************  
  
The feeling was nice. Oh so nice. It was like his head was a balloon, expanding and expanding. Warm and delicious sensations trickled into him down his throat, via his tongue. Fuzzy, disjointed thoughts floated across his mind. An image of a soft toy lion, well loved, some of its felt worn away. Gosh, I'm half asleep, I wish I could wake up. The thought slipped away into hazy half-dream logic. I wonder what one lion pride multiplied by another lion pride equals. Yummily, the musing made no sense. A memory of a sandy-haired, sweet faced boy, along with a flash of guilt. This is crazy, I have to wake up. The idea drifted away again.  
  
These were not Alex's thoughts. But connected like this, bonded via the blood-transferance link, they rang in his head as clearly as though they were his. Almost more giddy-exhilarating than the blood transfusion itself, this sense of being outside his own head, of being dispersed into nothing, of being no-one...  
  
Someone shook him by the shoulders, so roughly that his head was jolted away from the soft white neck, the particular thick blue vein. He turned with a snarl.  
  
Naiad backed up several paces, his lovely long hands raised in a placating motion. 'Alex. It's 8.15. I promised Amy we'd already be at her house by now. Anyway...much longer, and that girl isn't going to wake up, ever.'  
  
Alex briefly glanced down at the limp figure in his arms and knew it was the truth. Her skin was too pale, her breathing shallow. He looked cooly back to Naiad, the shadow of the snarl still on his lips. 'What are you, my fucking grandfather? I really don't require your advice.' He sat the girl down rather haphazardly against the wall. Then he knelt down next to her and nudged her awake. Or at least, awake enough to open her eyes. You don't remember me. You had too much to drink and you fell asleep. He stood up again, not bothering to check if the telepathic suggestion was properly planted. They always were. Telepathy for him was second nature, a reflex as easy as yawning and stretching.  
  
Naiad was doing a quick check of the apartment, looking for signs of their presence Alex supposed. He didn't much care. He grabbed his keys off the tacky glass coffee table and headed out the door.  
  
The other boy caught up to him in the building's foyer, heading down to the underground parking lot. 'Are we going back now? We can stay if you want. Find someone else. If it wasn't enough.'  
  
'It's never enough.' Alex muttered, without looking back. Their silver saab stood out like a stray moonbeam amongst the practical family sedans and low- budget hatchbacks. Alex leaned against the door for a moment, trying to shake the black mood he was suddenly in They always descended after the blood-link was severed, and lately they were more intense. Naiad didn't deserve to be the brunt of one though.  
  
Once in the car, Alex was the one to make conversation. 'How was yours?'  
  
Naiad shrugged, his eyes on the traffic. 'Quite nice. Satisfying. She was already sleepy, thankfully. You know how hopeless I am with mind control. How was the roomate?'  
  
'Mm, lovely. Deliciously, lusciously, head-poppingly lovely.'  
  
Naiad found time to give him a quizzical look in spite of the traffic. 'Oh yeah? You didn't hear bells ringing in your ears did you? See silver cords roping you heart to heart with her?'  
  
The other boy's tone was teasing, but Alex responded through a wry smile. 'Naiad, I tell you, I think every person I suck blood from is my soulmate while we're together. Their minds flooding mine, between sleep and wake, between control and blissful chemical -nuerotransmitter dissolution. All fuzzy and warm. Their hearts, beating slowly. At that dream threshold we have contact with humans in their most sublime moments, I think. Transformative. Sometimes I feel like it could transform me. While it lasts.'  
  
Naiad listened with a slight frown marring the preturnaturally smooth skin of his forehead, with a narrowing of his large and luminous black eyes. 'I never thought of it that way' he murmured, in a tone that said it was a very odd way to *want* to think about it.  
  
They drove in pensive silence for a little while. Naiad had taken one hand off the wheel to fiddle with one of the pieces of plain string he tied bracelet-like around his wrists. That meant he was worried about something. Alex was pretty sure he knew what that something was. Finally he spoke. 'Alex, what happened during these last six months? I mean, what happened really? Not the story you told us this morning about visiting a European cousin. That sure as hell wasn't very convincing. Where did you go? Who were you with?'  
  
Alex wasn't equal to this conversation right now. Maybe not ever. 'Nobody. Myself. What does it matter?' He could sense Naiad's worry though. He reached over and tugged up his shirt to poke his belly button. 'I went up through the skylight to the moon.'  
  
He thought he felt the other boy shiver under his touch before he twisted his torso away. 'I missed you' Naiad said softly then. His face was turned away too, in the other direction, where the side window threw back his own gorgeous reflection, though his eyes were still on the road. 'But something's changed in you. You know, when you left here last summer you were unstoppable. So confident, so exuberant. You said and did whatever and whoever you wanted, with no excuses and no apologies. You were larger than life. Do you even remember? That's not how you've come back. You're more.. erratic. And more remote.'  
  
Alex shrugged, and said lightly: 'the moon's a lonely rock.'  
  
The other boy just shook his head without looking at him. 'That's no kind of answer Alex.'  
  
'I told you everything I could this morning.' Alex said evenly. 'The trip.. broadened my horizons. I found out the world is a different kind of place to what I, to what we've all, thought it was. A more serious, less forgiving kind of place. With less room to move. So I move more cautiously now. And I expect you all to as well.' He rubbed an eye, tiredly. 'I can't give you any more detailed explanation. It wouldn't make any more sense to you than if I told you you were made out of stardust.'  
  
This time it was Alex staring straight ahead, feeling more than seeing Naiad's eyes burning into the side of his face. 'I want you to know... I mean you know, you know you can talk to me, right? When you want to talk, I'm here for you. Whenever you want.'  
  
'I know. Thanks. By the way..' Alex opened the glove box and started rifling through the cds stuffed inside. He found a compilation of Smog songs and slid it into the disc player.  
  
'Yeah?'  
  
'Could this conversation get any gayer?' Alex smirked. Naiad barked a shocked laugh; and Bill Calahan's ironic-as-eyegrit voice replaced the need for talk. 'I was a stranger when I came to town just yesterday. I was a stranger. They don't come much stranger. So why would you believe every word I say? Why would you believe a stranger....?'  
  
  
  
***************  
  
Amy's 'house' was a three-story palace a few streets out of Tribune's main shopping district. Grier had expected it to be some kind of hundred-year- old sandstone or mudbrick affair for some reason, maybe because Amy had kept insisting on how deeply rooted in the history of the town her family were, but it wasn't. It was an ultra-modern brick and glass mansion, set fifty paces back from the road, behind a lake with a yaght floating on it (a real, full sized bloody yaght!). Grier couldn't help looking at the three floors of tall windows as she walked up the lighted driveway, wondering who might be in there watching her approach. She almost wished she'd worn something other than her worn old jeans and the hand-me-down cardigan from her mother. By the time she pressed the buzzer, waiting while distant chimes echoed a long way inside, she felt like her heart was trying to thump its way out of her chest.  
  
In no time at all, Amy answered the door. She was dressed in jeans too, which made Grier feel a bit better, matched with an ordinary-looking turtleneck sweater. She had her long red hair twisted up in a braid. 'Hey! You decided to come afterall. Good girl.'  
  
'Afterall? I didn't think you were leaving me much choice in the matter.' Grier murmured, but she knew exactly like what Amy's greeting meant. Jewel. Amy had found out what had happened at lunch.  
  
'Oh I wasn't. It's lucky that you came or we might have had to come and get you.' Grier blinked. Just for a second there was something in Amy's eyes, some quickly repressed emotion that might have been scorn or regret. The next moment though she was bundling her inside, showing her where to put her coat, leading the way to the 'upstairs rumpus room'.  
  
'You've just missed Jewel and Russ. They went out to pick up pizzas and movies. I told them; not all meat-lovers pizza, and not all x rated movies, but it's no good trying to restrain those two. Especially when they're together. But anyhow if they bring home crap we can always eat nachos and watch Queer as Folk reruns or something. Do you like that show? I've seen both the US and the UK versions on cable. I think the US one is better. Less serious issues, more sex. The cast is better looking too. The central relationship is a lot more sexy..' Grier trailed a few steps behind, wondering what had made her host nervous enough to be babbling suddenly. This afternoon she'd been so cool and reserved. They finally reached the rumpus room, and Grier paused to take in the fire, the many candles, the large flat plasma screened tv against the wall, before moving in and sitting gingerly on one of the low to the ground sofas.  
  
'Mm, I do like Queer as Folk. I've only seen the US version though, my friend used to get it on cable. Great show. Um. So like are you're parents home tonight?'  
  
'No they're not. Dad's on a business trip. Paris. And my mother is visiting family. We have this big house all to ourselves. But Alex and Naiad should turn up eventually. I'll kill them if they don't. Naiad swore up and down the block he'd get them both here. They always make things more interesting.'  
  
'Ah. You know I met Alex this morning. And I met Jewel and Russ at lunch.' Grier blinked into the half light of the room, feeling surreal. Alone in the house.Yes, that was fear that ws making the hairs prickle along her forearms and at the back of her neck. What was she doing here? She felt, crazily, like laughing out loud. 'I don't think any of them'll be best pleased at running into me again today, you know. Particularly Jewel.' Grier remembered those agate hard blue eyes. Beautiful, pityless, inhuman eyes.  
  
'Yes, Jewel mentioned it. Maybe you'll get a chance to work it out tonight. Just out of curiousity though, since you knew she was going to be here and all.. why did you come?' Amy's tone was as flat as a slab of concrete, but there was that look in her eyes again, that searching look, less well concealed this time.  
  
A giggle escaped. Grier couldn't help it. 'I don't know. It was a nice night for a walk. The moon's pretty.'  
  
Amy just nodded, and stared down at a throw-pillow in her hands. Nothing more. 'Does she really dislike me?' Silence. 'Is she going to *do* something to me?'  
  
This time Amy smiled. It was almost a grimace. 'Well, you'll find out now, huh?' She stood suddenly, carefully laying the pillow back on the couch. 'Want to go downstairs again for a coke?'  
  
Grier laughed again. The nervousness, the fear, the sense of surreal absurdity tingling through her, it felt kind of like a fever. 'Sure, I'll take a coke.'  
  
The house had a kitchen the size of a small football field, with a ten foot tall ceiling, a glittering mosaic of mani-couloured tiles, and one wall made entirely out of glass in between. Grier trailed in behind Amy and perched on the edge of one of a dozen high country-style chairs lined up along a steel counter. She blinked at her hazy reflection in its brightly- shining surface.  
  
'It's a bit excessive isn't it' Amy murmured, handing Grier a can of coke and a glass.  
  
'It's ludicrous.' Grier replied, smiling. 'Unless your parents are feeding an army. Is this a mess hall?'  
  
To Grier's relief Amy chuckled instead of taking offense. 'No way. They barely even use it themselves. That's what cooks are for.'  
  
'Cooks, plural.' Grier noted, popping opening the can, which hissed loudly.  
  
'Naturally.' Amy grinned back.  
  
'Do any of the servents live on the premisis? Are they here tonight?' Grier asked, trying to sound casual.  
  
'The maid and the main cook are both live-in.'  
  
Grier nodded, trying not to show the wave of relief that washed over her on finding out they weren't in this big, austere house alone afterall. She'd barely had time to feel silly about being afraid in the first place when Amy went on, softly.  
  
'Neither of them are here now, though. They have the night off. We've been planning this small party for weeks. Ever since we knew Alex was coming home.'  
  
'You and Jewel and Russ and Naiad...'  
  
'Mm. Well Naiad hasn't been much help. He hasn't been much use at anything since Alex left, except pining away and making those damn astonishing scuplture in Art. You know I think he finally has some competition in that class now. Maybe he'll turn up more.' Amy smiled at her, but Grier struggled to smile back. She noticed she was rubbing her arms like they were goose-fleshed, and quickly put he hands down.  
  
'Have you guys all known each other long?'  
  
'Yes, quite a long time'. Amy replied, evasively.  
  
'Like, since high school?'  
  
Amy was excessively interested in her coke now, but after an extended pause she looked up, heaving a small sigh. 'Since we were born.'  
  
'Ah.' Grier replied. She still felt weird, tingly. She also felt like a huge weight was pushing down on her chest. 'I didn't realise you were all that close. I feel kind of like an intruder! Maybe I should leave.'  
  
'No! You're not an intruder. It's my house and I invited you. Besides, most kids from around these parts have known each other for years and years.'  
  
'All the same..' Grier started to rise, but suddenly, almost shockingly, the usually cooly-ironic girl grabbed her hand.  
  
'Please don't go. I want you to stay. I need you to.' Grier just looked at her until she went on reluctantly. 'We aren't really that close. Actually Jewel and I don't see eye to eye on most things. After I saw everyone together again today I realised, Jewel has an agenda for tonight. I can't give her the chance to carry it out. But if it's just the five of us, I don't see any way to stop her. Oh Grier, I can't explain it very well, but it's really important and I need your help.'  
  
Grier withdrew her hand slowly. 'You weren't planning on telling me any of this. All you need is a distraction or.. a way to keep things from being said openly tonight? That's the only reason you invited me here.'  
  
Amy looked ready to deny it but then she took a look at Grier's face, and she grimaced. 'You're right. But Grier I wouldn't have done it if it wasn't important. Anyway, you might run into them on the way out..'  
  
Grier didn't get a chance to ask her what she meant by the last, because a silvery chiming filled the air. The doorbell.  
  
'It doesn't seem I have much choice, does it?' Grier said. 'I'll stay.' 


End file.
